A Queen from humble beginnings to top make-up expert
MEET Queen Motlatle, a professional make-up artist and a well-travelled single mother. Her dream was to be Miss South Africa but when that didn’t happen, she started a career as a make-up artist.
Today Motlatle is an international make-up artist with a Master’s degree in special effects from Hollywood. She is a ball of contagious energy who started as a counter manager for Revlon at Edgars.
From then on her career path knew no bounds and shot her onwards and upwards.
She is the head of House of Queen, a grooming service company providing make-up, hair, prosthetic special effects, body painting, styling and creative directorship services. She had an opportunity to work on the movie and then went to Los Angeles to perfect her craft.
She now does prosthetics and special effects make-up.
Motlatle has made special effects of people being burnt and bruised, and as a result one of her interns, Thabiso Mokoena, posted the images on social media, claiming it to be his work.
“On October 31, House of Queen held a marketing event to showcase our services to the media and prospective clients.
“We have since learnt, with dismay, that one of our interns, Thabiso Mokoena, was claiming this work as his own on social media networks.
“This is a complete misrepresentation of the facts, indeed a clear-cut case of plagiarism.
“We wish to clarify the background and make absolutely clear whose work this is.
“It therefore comes as a complete disappointment to learn that an intern who has only been with the programme for two months would claim the work of trained professionals as his own.
“The work which Thabiso claims as his own, was in fact created and designed by Queen Motlatle. She then mandated her students, Thabiso among them, to add onto the various pieces.
“This exercise falls in line with the training programme run by the school.
“As management, we are incredibly concerned as this is a clear case of plagiarism, and a violation of the contract.
“Not only has Thabiso claimed the work, he has not credited House of Queen. Indeed, he has attached his personal contact details to the visuals for anyone interested in acquiring these services to contact him directly.
“Thabiso is in actual fact not a qualified artist, he holds a national diploma in Performing Arts from the Tshwane University of Technology.
“He has only been studying at the House of Queen Learning Academy for two months and has no portfolio of evidence to showcase his work. He has certainly not worked on movies, thrillers etc as per his claims in his original post”, House of Queen said.
Motlatle has created a name for herself and has worked in big projects across the world. Her achievements include:
(theatre), being part of the Fifa World Cup as head creative designer and conceptualising the make-up look and feel, designing make-up on
part of Chris Rock’s tour, SABC news presidential correspondents, working with former president Thabo Mbeki and President Jacob Zuma and as personal make-up artist to former president Nelson Mandela.
She would like to see more special effects work in Africa being used and more women in the field of prosthetics and special effects. See more of her work at www.houseofqueen.com.